THREE-RING LOLLAPALOOZA SHOW PROVES A SUCCESS

ROGER CATLIN; Courant Rock CriticTHE HARTFORD COURANT

Conceived last year as a traveling showcase of alternative music with an attendant sideshow of political information, ethnic food and bazaar items, the Lollapalooza tour has turned into one of the most successful of summer tours.

Lollapalooza '92, which, like the first, bypassed Connecticut, was one of the hottest tickets of the season at the 15,000-capacity Great Woods, where its two daylong shows Friday and Saturday had long been sold out.

Although it was never planned that way, the Lollapalooza '92 offers a couple of Top 10-level performers in headlining Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam.

But the lineup is assiduously turned against the mainstream in the clanging, challenging assault of Ministry; the hardcore rap of Ice Cube, and in the popular booths for temporary tattoos and nose piercing.

The weirdest aspect, however, was not musical at all, but the hardcore circus stunts of the Jim Rose Traveling Freak Show, which featured its namesake pulling up concrete blocks with nipple rings and another performer whose act is pouring things down to his stomach via a tube down his nose and summoning them back up (to be distributed to the audience to taste!).

And the bands who took part seemed envious of the sideshow's extreme entertainment. Chris Cornell of the band Soundgarden, for example, praised the Jim Rose show during his band's set, and although his band's hard rock sludge has solidified, the most challenging thing it could render was doing a cover version of Body Count's "Cop Killer" in the name of freedom of speech.

"We're going to keep playing it until you're able to buy it again," Cornell pledged.

For his part, Ice Cube stood up for his fellow rapper Ice-T with the following logic: "Records don't kill kids, cops do." Although he didn't perform it, he had the audience chant "cop killer!"

As the sole rapper (and only black) on the roster that was originally intended to show diversity, Ice Cube's appearance smacked of tokenism. And although many in the nose ring and braces

crowd grooved to his beat in the late afternoon sun, they didn't always take his message to heart. Nevertheless, he pleased some when he brought back "Gangsta, Gangsta" from his previous band N.W.A.

The politics were extremely leftist, but the crowd's musical tastes were strongly patriotic. Pearl Jam's passionate set, which brought the most stage-diving moshers of the day, jammed the seats as did fellow Seattle natives Soundgarden later.

Conversely, few seemed to pay attention to the British acts on the roster -- Lush, who opened the show at 2 p.m., and the Jesus and Mary Chain, who played delicious rock anthems midafternoon.

Ministry seemed best matched to the willful weirdness of the crowd. Surrounded by dozens of skulls, whole animal skeletons and the ambience of carcasses, Al Jourgensen, dressed in cowboy hat, long beard and hair, looked like he was fronting ZZ Top from hell, or maybe the house band from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

But the sound was something else: bone-crushing, industrial pulverizers and sampled voices attached to strangely catchy guitar phrases and shouts. It was an absorbing assault from top to bottom.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers did not disappoint by capping the long day's entertainment, while tribal bonfires burned troublingly on the horizons of the lawn seats.

Opening with "Give It Away," with lead singer Anthony Kiedis dressed in black and white clown clothes, emphasized the three-ring nature of the event. Although the band members have changed over the years, the backbone to the band is Keidis and Flea on bass, a guy as proficient on his instrument and full of wild abandon as no one in rock since Keith Moon. During breaks between songs, Flea, dressed only in underwear and boots, suggested a short jam to James Brown and began a version of Neil Young's "Needle and the Damage Done" that he finished, in part because the band has also been devastated by drug abuse.

Although the recent hit "The Bridge," an uncharacteristic ballad, was part of the set, it was by no means the high point.

The Peppers also capped their set by matching the distracting bonfires of the lawn with their own bit of fireplay: hardhats with torches on top, and a female fire-eater blowing 6-foot plumes skyward, Kiss-style.